Posts from Compost & Soil

A few years ago when reviews of the NatureMill composter started to surface there were Before&After photos of what the food looked like going in and the compost looked like coming out, but there weren't many day-today photos of how it all worked. If this item is on your holiday wish list, make sure you check out this play by play!

It can be stinky, and an unpleasant surprise should you stumble on it unexpectedly, but kitchen compost is anything but trash. Kitchen composters typically house scraps from cooking, so they don't require too much maintenance if you have an outdoor compost or city-wide composting programs. Just store it, empty it, and clean it now and then. So how do you tie in this kitchen essential without distracting from the design of your kitchen? Take some tips from fellow compost-inclined minds and see what ideas they have to share.

I'm a city dweller who lives in a 2nd floor apartment with no outdoor space or garden to call my own. While I have plans to start my own indoor worm composting system at some point, for now I drop my compost off at my weekly CSA pick-up, where it's then given to my neighborhood community garden. So that means that I'm always looking for a better way to store my scraps. Enter the Fuccillo Freezer Compost Bin:

Thinking about your last BBQ of the summer season? Labor Day weekend is just around the corner, so take advantage of the remaining summer nights—enjoy friends, grill locally-grown corn and peaches, and eat outside. And unless you're setting the table for just a few, there's always the dinnerware to consider. With so many options on the market, it can be difficult to determine product differences and benefits. So, here are three brands that aren't only eco-friendly, but will also add a whole lot of flair to your table setting.

I'm always on the lookout for a better bag when it comes to my pup's poop. It's a dirty topic, but one that pet owners deal with every day. I'm intrigued by these bags which claim to be tough yet degrade at the same rate as an apple.

Most apartment and small space dwellers can agree on something they envy of homeowners: outdoor and garden space. A group of New Zealand students share that jealously and are hoping to fix it with their clip-on garden in a box, Plant Room. It is literally a box bolted to the exterior of an apartment building, that will expand the square footage of your space, provide room for a vegetable garden, clothes line, rainwater collection and solar hot water production!

A few days ago, I took some food scraps out to our happily rodent-free compost bin in the back yard. It was a quiet morning, and I heard a soft noise coming, I thought, from the neighbor's yard. Then I realized that noise was emanating from the compost bin. And the compost was bobbing up and down. So I carefully peered in, afraid of what I might find…

It has now been one month since we started testing our new Worm Factory and VermiHut, and while it usually takes a few months for these types of bins to reach their optimum performance, we're going to rate them based on our experience so far. We'll update you again in the future, but for now we can say the more expensive Worm Factory 360 actually did perform better.

Although we compost and recycle, we still generate some trash. We jumped for joy the day we discovered BioBags but now, after giving them a good long run, we're not so sure that they'll make our shopping list ever again.

Q: I'm considering buying the NatureMill Plus home composter for my kitchen, but before I do, I wonder if any Re-Nest readers have purchased it and if they could share their experiences with the product? Good? Bad? Worth the money?